This specification relates to content presentation.
The Internet provides access to a wide variety of resources, such as video and/or audio files, as well as web pages for particular subjects or particular news articles. Access to these resources has provided opportunities for other content (e.g., advertisements or ads) to be provided with the resources. For example, web pages can include advertisement slots in which advertisements can be presented. The advertisements slots can be defined in the web page or defined for presentation with a web page, for example, in a pop-up window.
Performance measures can be used as a quality measure of presented content items. An example of a performance measure is the click-through-rate (CTR). In some implementations, the CTR is a value representing the number of times a content item was selected by a user as compared to the number of times the content item was presented. Content items with a high CTR are generally considered higher quality than content items with a low CTR.
The performance of a content item can be influenced by many factors including, for example, the resource it is presented with and the position the content item occupies on the resource. For example, an advertisement presented in the top advertisement slot of a webpage may achieve a CTR different than the same advertisement presented in the bottom advertisement slot of the same webpage. In this example, the advertisement hasn't changed but the position of the advertisement on the webpage has. As another example, an advertisement presented in an advertisement slot of a webpage may achieve a CTR different than the same advertisement presented in the same advertisement slot after the webpage has been changed (i.e. restructured).
The performance effects attributable to a resource upon which a content item is presented can be referred to as the performance factors. Collectively, the performance factors can be referred to as a performance profile. Not considering the performance profile of a resource when comparing the relative performance of content items can render the comparison less useful. For example, a first advertisement presented in the top advertisement slot of a webpage may achieve a first CTR and a second advertisement presented in the different advertisement slot of a webpage may achieve a second CTR. Comparing the first CTR to the second CTR can be less useful as a quality comparison because the first and second CTR values can include the positional effects of the webpage.